Now that I’ve experimented with working in a completely different mode for ‘Peatland Charm Bracelet‘, I’m much more aware of the ways in which I’ve previously limited the scope of my creative work. That project also shone new light on the depth and significance of my connection to Calderdale.
The sheer ‘muchness’ of Calderdale has long been a source of delight and creative inspiration to me. The shapes, colours and textures of my mixed media collage work all link back to the rich sensory experience of spending time outdoors walking and running here in the South Pennines.
Collage materials (mixed media on paper)
Part of me is longing to return to my stash of materials, eager to pick up the threads of my quest to make work that evokes the qualities and moods of this incredibly varied landscape. But part of me is wary of falling back into potentially regressive habits if I do.
I don’t want to return to my old, two-stage process of first making collage materials then cutting and assembling them to construct a final piece. It’s perpetuating an unnecessary divide between intuitive, playful, experimental mark-making and more considered, analytical thinking. Both have their place and I’m curious about how my work might evolve if I’m able to bring them into a more integrated, responsive dialogue with one another.
I realise that if I want to better understand and develop the visual language I use to convey my experience of Calderdale, I need time to explore, experiment and reflect on what I’m learning. And the best way to help myself achieve that is by making it an ongoing project. And by giving it a name.
When I first set out to become better acquainted with my own curiosity I simply paid close attention to where it led me and captured notes, ideas and images as I went along. For a while this was enough to help me make sense of my experience and inform my next steps. Now, however, things are beginning to spiral out of control.
Remaining responsive to the lived reality of being curious is generating such a wealth of material and interesting possibilities that I’m beginning to drown in the chaos and lose my sense of direction and purpose. Interestingly, the clarity I’m looking for eventually arrives thanks to a little help from my curiosity.
Tired of ploughing through notes that only throw up yet more knotty questions, I decide to facilitate my own process in a more creatively curious way. I grab a book and open it at a random page. The book is Susie Dent’s ‘Word Perfect’, a collection of 366 words and their etymological backstories, one for each day of a leap year.
The particular word I’ve landed on is ‘@’. I read her short account of its origins and the chain of events through which this once-niche symbol became ubiquitous in digital communications. Then I scribble down the first ideas that come into my head.
Rat @@@. The c@ sat on the mat. Where am I @? The ‘a’ with the curly tail. Tag, you’re @!
Interesting, that last one. A user tag. A declaration of unique identity. I am @estherwaite, currently in the middle of a short and sweet experimental exercise in search of insight. I’m listening to my curiosity to see where my attention is being drawn, keen to discover what there is to learn from doing so.
So, what am I learning?
That it doesn’t matter which book this happened to be, or which page I happened to choose. What matters is the quality of dialogue between what I already know and what I’m discovering through doing this activity. That when I engage with my curiosity the specifics of what I’m doing might take any form. That the continuity in the work stems from me, locating myself here at the heart of the inquiry, providing a point of return no matter where my travels happen to lead me.
The sense of overwhelm I’ve been experiencing melts away as I envisage myself setting out on multiple excursions, some lengthy and some – like this one – extremely brief. Sometimes I’m mapping brand new territory, sometimes I’m revisiting familiar ports of call with fresh eyes. Wherever my curiosity takes me, it’s not going to be one long, disorienting adventure into the unknown. Wherever I may choose to follow, I’ll eventually return home equipped with stories to tell, discoveries to share and new skills to add to the mix.
This frame of reference make sense when I look back through my notes and consider the dynamics of the different activities I’ve been drawn to recently. This short encounter with the ‘@’ symbol involved a rapid cycle of learning and discovery that’s feeding into the ongoing development of a ‘meta’ perspective for my programme of work. My current experiments with mixed media materials have a slower pace, feeding into the work I’m doing to develop the visual language I use to communicate my experience of the Calderdale landscape. My ongoing efforts to decode the mysteries of DAW software feed into the longer-term development of my skills working with audio.
There’s a place for everything and my unique vantage point on the world is the place where all these diverse strands intersect, here at the centre of it all. It doesn’t matter how I direct my time as long as I’m engaging with my curiosity and paying careful attention to what I learn through doing so.
As I continue join the dots between the contrasting places my curiosity has been taking me, another metaphor springs to mind. It’s a bee moving from location to location, mapping out reliable sources of nectar and pollen, securing food for its journey and nourishing the collective life of the hive on its return.
It’s a killer question, as immortalised by Bloat the pufferfish at the end of Pixar’s 2003 movie ‘Finding Nemo’. As February races towards March I can wholeheartedly identify with that fish, bobbing around Sydney harbour in his little plastic bag.
After the final flurry to complete my peatland project it seems I’ve arrived at a creative impasse. I’m lacking energy and direction, missing that comforting sense of purpose and focus that comes with working towards something concrete and time-bound.
The obvious solution is to set myself up with a new project, and I’m not short of options. Since embarking on my curiosity adventure I’ve generated an abundance of notes, collected hundreds of photographs and mapped out all manner of promising trajectories. Trouble is, I’m struggling to commit to anything.
I know I’m keen to revisit some ideas involving sound and music, so I spend a few days indulging my curiosity in the technical and creative challenges of working with audio. Although I’m learning a lot, and I’m highly motivated to learn more, the lack of a clear sense of purpose is still bugging me.
Am I making useful progress, or wasting time? Is following my curiosity constructive, or am I passively allowing it to lead me astray? Maybe underneath all this apparent busy-ness I’m still just floating helplessly in my plastic bag, at the mercy of wherever the tide carries me.
Uncomfortable questions begin to close in on me like hungry sharks. What if all this curiosity-chasing turns out to be pointless? What if I spend six months down an audio rabbit hole only to return empty handed? Or if I keep dreaming up so many creative possibilities that I ideate myself into oblivion? I glare accusingly at my compass charm. What does ‘trust the process’ even mean??
With a heavy heart I face the possibility that I am, and have been, completely wasting my time. It’s not a pleasant moment, but apparently it’s the one I need to reorient myself.
Yes, I may indeed be wasting my time, because embracing the possibility of failure is fundamental to what it means to trust the process. It’s not a matter of having blind faith that everything will work out exactly as I hope or expect, it’s about accepting that whatever my experience brings me will be of value in helping me to learn my way forward. It’s one of the key guiding principles with which I first set this programme of work in motion.
And no, I don’t really believe I’m wasting my time. I think I’ve just learned so much about myself, my curiosity, my creativity and my relationship with the upper moorland over the past few months that I need a minute to take stock and regroup.
I’ve been chasing the ‘what next’ without giving enough thought to the all-important ‘how next’. I need time to digest what I’ve learned so far and feed this back into how I approach this programme of work. Otherwise I’ll stay stuck in this plastic bag, forever adrift on a disorienting ocean of endless possibilities.
So as spring officially arrives I’m having a seasonally appropriate clear-out. I’m setting myself up with more structured methods to support my work and redesigning the framework I use to capture themes, interconnections and ideas. There’s more still to do, but it’s helping with the shark problem. Now to find my way out of the bag.
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